by Ramin Mazaheri
Keep asking the fundamental question: Has the European Union brought the prosperity and security it promised?
No.
Then that will always be a perfectly valid reason for exiting.
Because it hasn’t brought prosperity and security, can the European Union be reformed?
I have said “no” for years, but it’s been a month of historic changes in Europe, with more to come.
After years of rejecting such an idea, Europe’s leaders are expected to unveil a new plan for a “two-speed” European Union – where countries can choose their level of involvement – on March 25th, the 60th anniversary of the EU.
This is a rather shocking about-face, but will it save the Union?
Let’s be honest: The EU is nearly 60 and the bloom is off the rose, especially if she cuts her hair any shorter.
The timing is clear: France’s anti-Euroeverything Marine Le Pen seems assured of making it to the 2nd round presidential vote 8 weeks from now.
Le Pen has promised a Frexit vote this year if elected? Yes, she’s still losing in the 2nd round of all polls, but it has been a year of upsetting the political establishment: Cameron, Renzi, Hollande, Sarkozy, Clinton, etc.
My question is: Why not earlier, Brussels?
Yes, all governments move slowly, but the Brexit vote was last year.
A year ago is also when the uber-neoliberal International Monetary Fund admitted that austerity policies don’t work, which is something proven by the fact that they have never worked anywhere in recorded human history.
If Brussels thinks this can be a game changer in the French election, it may be too late.
That will all depend on if the EU/mainstream media’s preferred candidate – neoliberal globalist Emmanuel Macron – picks up the ball and runs with it or not.
But how can an unprecedented plan to unify a continent work if Brussels is always behind the curve, instead of setting it? The European Union is a revolutionary idea, but it bypassed the formation of a revolutionary leadership class and went straight to a middling, self-protective, corrupt bureaucratic guardianship.
Monday morning quarterbacking aside, 2 historic events just occurred
First, on March 1st European Commission President and Luxembourgeois Jean-Claude Juncker unveiled a White Paper on the future of the EU. He described five different scenarios about what the EU could be like in 2025.
Juncker clearly doesn’t have much faith in the future of the EU because, à la Francois Hollande, he won’t be seeking a 2nd term in 2019. Heck, he may even quit this month.
Hardly an inspiring leader who can unify a bloc, eh? Castro, he ain’t! Juncker’s (non) leadership is only inspiring to Eurosceptics.
The five options were presented to give the impression of democratic choice. Had they presented just one option…well, that would have been straightforward – and a bureaucratic class always rely on obfuscation to maintain power.
Hidden and middling to the maximum – at number 3 – among outgoing president Juncker’s five different plans was a two-speed Europe.
We aren’t going to waste time with the other four, because a two-speed Europe is the only one that really matters.
It is already a fact that it’s the only one that really matters because this week the heads of Germany, France, Italy and Spain met in Paris and said this is what they will push for.
This is a veritable political earthquake, even if people don’t realize it yet. It’s also an overturning of years of explicitly rejecting such changes.
But after Brexit the EU knows they have a problem, and that changes must be made.
Waitaminut: Yer telling me the EU is actually gonna change?
Is there any chance any major changes – such as a two-speed Europe – will be implemented, and quickly?
That depends – do you mean “democratically implemented”?
Firstly, let’s recall that a lack of democratic approval has never stopped the EU before: 8 times since 1992 national referendums have rejected key aspects of the EU, only to be totally and undemocratically ignored or subverted.
Amazing how such facts of history get ignored by the rabidly pro-EU supporters….
What would “democratically implemented” actually look like?
Well, European PMs are up for re-election in 2019. To give any changes the democratic approval they certainly require, EU leaders would need to decide, agree and campaign on the proposed changes well before this next legislative vote. That would give the public the chance to give their say – via vote – on the new changes.
But democratically proposing, debating and voting on structural changes to the EU’s political foundations by 2019?
It’s not impossible, but that’s still a very ambitious goal.
It would be ambitious of any single nation to hold a referendum on radically altering its very political structure.
But we are not talking about a single nation – we are talking about 28 of them. Well, 27 after Brexit.
More importantly, I have repeatedly stated that the EU is structurally incapable of reform because any major change requires the unanimous approval of all 27 members. Getting just 27 people to agree on anything is an arduous process, much less 27 nations.
Case in point: On Friday the EU was stymied in their effort get Poland’s Donald Tusk’s re-elected as president of the European Council. One country voted against him, so the body was nearly brought to a halt.
The dissenting country? Poland.
Noble Poland! Free Poland! Partitioned…Poland.
Why? Because there is both intense Euroscepticism in Poland, and also intense pro-EU sentiment…and this is the same everywhere. It’s complicated and emotional.
Perhaps EU “founders” realized this by installing this principle of unanimity, one which was likely taken from…Poland again!
The “liberum veto” was used during the era of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a dominant and important (if unfairly ignored) European power. The veto was a major democratic advancement against absolute monarchy, and the PLC produced just the 2nd codified constitution in modern history, after the US.
When all the nobles were truly noble and in agreement, the unanimity principle worked out fine and the union peaked in the early 17th century. But when some aristocrats were bought off by foreign powers…proceedings could easily come to a dead halt and thus stagnation set in.
And then partition. And more partition.
In the case of Tusk, the liberum veto principle was not technically in play, but it had been common precedent for the council president to be elected unanimously.
Furthermore, Poland persuasively argued that the EU had no right to elect Tusk as their president when he was not even backed by his home country, LOL!
No matter – the EU ignored Poland’s claim for sovereignty over their own officials and re-elected Tusk anyway.
Poland expected the unanimity principle to be followed, but it wasn’t technically enshrined in this case, and so the bureaucrats got their way.
A new precedent has also been set: The EU can apparently dragoon anyone they want into power.
However, it is still this liberum veto system which ultimately defines the political structure of the European Union and which will make any change – two, three, 18-speed – seemingly impossible to democratically implement.
News flash: A multi-speed Europe is already legal, so they don’t need democracy
EU rules already permit groups of at least nine member states to pursue “enhanced cooperation”.
Barring a major earthquake that brings the EU to a halt – like a Frexit – the bureaucrats already have all the tools at their disposal to enforce the will of the elites. They don’t need any “referendum” – they’ll say “the rules for a multi-speed Europe have already been democratically approved” (except when they were rejected).
The basis of a multi-speed Europe is already permitted, it’s going to happen with or without a vote, and you can check the Rome Summit on March 25 to find that out for sure.
That’s the reality.
I predict they will use this rationale to create a two-speed Europe, regardless of the democratic preference of over 500 million people. Perhaps they will put it to a vote…in which case March 25th will announce the start of that campaign, and this is all we’ll be talking about for 2 years.
But I am Eurosceptical because the EU, and especially the Eurozone, was never a very democratic project. The EU is, fundamentally, a bureaucrat and lobby-dominated institution, after all – it was never truly revolutionary.
So what is a multi-speed Europe? We do have to move on….
A multi-speed Europe is basically a “coalition of the willing” – countries can join or not join multinational policies on economic growth, border protection, common defense, tax systems and others as they wish.
That’s the positive spin on it.
The negative spin is: This allows Western Europe to integrate at an even more breakneck pace, which is something many Western Europeans already do not want (see, “Brexit”).
Secondly, I hardly doubt the 27 nations of the EU will be democratically consulting their citizens for each and every multinational policy they join. The EU’s policies of economic austerity have been rammed through over the will of their people, so why will the future be any different?
Thirdly, a multi-speed Europe is already deeply opposed by many members in Central/Eastern Europe, who see themselves as being left out. Opposition to this plan was a major reason why Poland refused to vote in favor of native son Tusk.
Is a multi-speed Europe a good idea?
The existential crisis of the EU has always boiled down to this: Should there be “more Europe” or “less Europe”?
Clearly, changes are needed, because countries which have followed EU and Eurozone dictates have gone into a prolonged crisis.
EU economic growth since 2010 is just 1.3%, which is below the 1.5% required to start producing jobs. And this is me being charitable: I’m ignoring the -4.4% growth of 2009.
The best gauge of economic policies is how long and how deep an economic downturn lasts, as capitalism guarantees there will definitely be downturns, after all. For an alternative system, please check the stable long-term growth rates of communist behemoths like China as well as international blockade victims like Cuba.
The need to end the EU’s economic woes is immediate and clear.
Also clear is that there are huge economic divergences between EU countries – standard of living, borrowing rates, economic output, etc.
The EU was supposed to end this divergence. It was going to bring prosperity and stability, remember?
But capitalists never waste a good crisis and the 2009 European Sovereign Debt Crisis will go down in history as the time when the EU stopped working and started dying.
It is now abundantly clear that the economic solidarity which would be required from the richer nations of the EU to make “more Europe” work…simply does not exist.
Germany, France and the Netherlands only had the stomach to economically gut and destroy weaker nations like Greece and Portugal.
The rich nations got what they wanted – ports, airports, water departments, laws favoring their own industries against local industries – and now they want to take their money and leave “more Europe” behind.
Thus we will have “multiple speed” Europe on the table for the first time ever.
A “multiple-speed Europe” could indeed be a great option – it recognizes the fact that the required economic solidarity does not exist amid economically divergent countries.
The best option would be for Germany to leave, as many economists suggest – their economy is too strong and it upsets the entire balance. This is quite logical, if you think about it. You never read about that, though.
Germany can take their stupid, economically-blind, false-morality ideology of “We refuse to recognize that for us to export means someone has to import, and thus imbalances are required to exist, ” and not come back, as far as the rest of Europe is concerned.
Germany wants to stay in because neoliberal plundering is very profitable, after all.
Or countries like Greece could leave and start choosing their own economic policies to benefit their own citizens instead of French and German bankers.
They could drop out of the Euro and re-adopt the drachma, allowing them to set their own exchange rates, pay off their debt (read: interest on debt) and regain economic competitiveness.
But there are no guarantees on what a “multiple speed” Europe will actually look like, however….
Two-speed Europe will be “Rich Eurozone, poor everyone else”
It seems difficult to believe that high finance won’t win the day, as this is Europe and it is capitalist.
Therefore, the dividing line is likely to be set by Eurozone members banding together to form the top speed.
This why I don’t see “multiple speed” Europe being decided in March, or implemented by 2019, because the EU/Eurozone has to punish the hell out of Britain for Brexit.
That is a serious job!
Brexit is expected to be formally trigged this week (March 15), which means it’s not until 2019 that France and Germany can prove to Greece, Portugal and anyone else thinking of existing just how costly it will be to quit the club. If “multiple speed EU” is decided before Britain pays, we should see a rash of Euro exits.
And doesn’t France and Germany want to intimidate anyone from exiting? Doesn’t France and Germany want the neoliberal looting of poor countries to continue ?
Because there’s money still to be had! Smaller native industries to be bankrupted! Key infrastructure to be privatized! What kind of a half-hearted bust-out scheme are they running?!
Did they grow a conscience, maybe?
Well, I don’t think like a capitalist, so maybe I’m not seeing the bigger picture.
However, the Eurozone-speed group will almost certainly put up tariffs against the non-Eurozone speed members, and the latter will lose time after time.
How can they compete economically in a two-speed system when they were already behind during the time of single-EU unity?
The countries which didn’t adopt the Euro will band together, and you’ll basically have Western Europe versus Central Europe, economically. Capitalism is “the biggest corporation wins, not the best”, of course, and Western Europe has many more huge corporations set to dominate.
Also, the EU is currently in a crisis – why would the weaker EU countries even want to renegotiate the structure of the EU right now?
They are worse off than anyone else in the bloc, so they have even less pull than usual, therefore the solution can only entrench the current state of increased inequality.
So, given that it looks so bad for the lower gear of 2-speed Europe, why will Central Europe even stay in the European Union? They won’t, and the EU will ultimately disintegrate.
This is the path I foresee for the EU: Slow, painful, and the current winners will remain winners because that’s capitalism, which lacks the multinational solidarity of communism.
Frankly, Central Europe would do much better to join up with Russia, Iran and China and become the easternmost point of China’s “One Belt, One Road” program, which is going to be the new McDonald’s.
Another option: A zero-speed Europe
Why go through this slow, painful, inevitable process I just described?
There is another option: a zero-speed Europe.
That is what will happen if Marine Le Pen wins (though I prefer Jean-Luc Melenchon, of course), as France has historically been the biggest advocate of a unified Europe – lose France, and Europe goes down.
Why choose an inherently elitist 2-speed solution – how is entrenching inequality any form of progress?
The EU would do better to bring a total halt to the project in order to debate and make totally new changes. A “2nd Federal Republic of Europe” or something like that. It should be communist, of course.
The biggest obstacle is changing the idea that a total halt is equivalent to death.
This is true firstly on the most-simple literal level: pro-EU propagandists say that the death of the European Union means the return of European war.
This type of logic is not logic at all, as it based on the ultimate fear: massive death. We deserve better than that; we should think more of ourselves than that.
So why must a halt to the European Union mean the end of the concept of a united Europe?
Is THIS version of a united Europe the only possible version?
Must it continue because it has lasted 60 years and it must last another 60, or another 160?
A resounding “No” is the only logical answer to all of these. There IS an alternative.
Monetary systems and political unions come and go, and this crazy blue marble keeps on spinning, and mankind keeps advancing in knowledge just the same.
If the system is not working, why not replace it? Why try to patch up a clearly-flawed system?
The world has changed drastically in the last 30 years, the rise of computers and digital finance being two sweeping societal changes – why not start fresh with a new system that confines the vast powers of these two behemoths? That’s just a start.
Must we continue with the new lack of limits on the spying powers of national governments? With the neoliberal ideas that have gutted European industry and its social safety net?
The European Union can be entirely remade – that IS a real alternative.
It would be a true revolution which sweeps away a dead, undemocratic and structurally unworkable version.
Detractors will say that there is not a clear plan, but neither is there a clear plan for this version of the EU’s future!
The difference is: we are actually talking about and working on the latter instead of the former. This is the same rationale intelligently used by environmentalists: “Well of course renewable energies aren’t as good as nuclear, oil or coal yet – we put all of our funding and R&D into those three options!”
The European Union can, should and must be reborn if it is going to start ending economic inequality and start promoting true unity, solidarity and mutually-beneficial cooperation.
A new European Union must reject what has clearly failed and what has been rejected: neoliberalism and capitalism.
A return to socialism is the only logical choice – history’s pendulum can only swing this way for Europe.
People need to grasp – and they don’t, and the mainstream media purposely obscures it – just how far to the right we currently are economically: Neoliberalism, European austerity, Trump’s domestic economic agenda – we cannot get much more unregulated and thus more unequal.
But working within the current structure of the EU is not going to work.
No one knows what a “multi-speed Europe” option will even look like, but for many it seems like: institutionalized 2nd-class citizenry for Central Europe; the cementing of the neo-imperial looting of countries like Greece; the cementing of right-wing roll backs to social rights and living standards in countries like France.
It’s been a historic fortnight. In another fortnight we’ll see what the aristocratic leaders of the European Union actually propose. On March 25th “two-speed Europe” is going to get very real!
More interestingly and more importantly, we’ll see what democratic votes in France and the Netherlands produce. In an intelligent world it would be more communism, but sometimes people just have to hit bottom before they turn themselves around.
Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. His work has appeared in various journals, magazines and websites, as well as on radio and television.
Macron’s worldview makes me very sad. I found Old France to be charming with a great sense of community and love of the land. Macron’s world view is a globalist dictatorship out of the book “Animal Farm”. It would surprise most French to find that the EU god state is a dictatorship controlled by four UN-ELECTED presidents and one UN-ELECTED commissar. If this is the future, my wife and I do not wish to ever visit the EU province of France again.
Like Marine Le Pen, Jean Luc Mellenchon rejects of France’s current Russophobic foreign policy and wants France to leave both the euro and NATO but lacks a large party base.
Marine Le Pen has stated that the EU cannot exist without France which is why the globalists are attacking her so strongly. See also Nigel Farage Interview With Marine Le Pen! 15th March 2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWaYTGt3Kvo
For the real implications of the Dutch elections not covered in the fake news networks see: https://www.theautomaticearth.com/2017/03/winners-are-losers-and-left-is-right/
As an American who has lived in France since 1994, here is what I have to say with regard your comments.
Yes, we are bombarded on a daily basis with thuds, gangs and drugs. What country isn’t?
Yes, we have a problem in France to integrate 2nd and 3rd generation muslims into French society.
Does the US not have the same problem with hispanics?
So where’s the problem?
The French and muslims have lived side by side since the liberation of Algeria 1968? (correct me if I”m wrong).
I work on a daily basis with Muslims and I don’t have any problem with them, nor they with me.
Yes, you heard that right, I, American, work, with Muslims, in France.
I don’t know how we went from re-integration of Muslims, after colonialism, to we hate all muslims.
This is not possible. I love my muslim brothers and sisters whom I worked side by side with.
There must be something more going on, but neither of us have understood what.
It is important to understand that neither Sarkozy, Hollande, or Manny Macaroni are French.
The notorious Israeli spy, Jonathan Pollard, said an interesting thing at his sentencing:
“I am a Jew, and as a Jew, my first allegiance is to the state of Israel.”
The EU has deteriorated because (after a brilliant postwar start) it was infiltrated by crooks, and finally taken over by the agents of global capitalism, who fundamentally favour Nazism – just like Europe before the war. The first blatant crook that I noticed was Neil Kinnock UK who “disciplined” whistleblowers for revealing the extent of nepotism that was beginning to creep into the EU bureaucracy. Even worse Tony BLiar UK who presided over the EU to unleash NATZO’s self-styled “irresistible armed might” on little Serbia – the first bombs to be dropped on European soil since Hitler’s war. Then that infamous EU arrest warrant executed by Britain on a trumped up charge by Sweden. Then the shameless promotion of neoNazis to oust the legitimate govt in Ukraine. And the financial blackmail of Greece. Can we now clean the filth out of this Augean stable, or shall we have to wait till another world war purifies Europe with fire?
I think the latter would be the prescribed “medicine” at some point.
I’m french and let me assure you that 1) Marine Le Pen has exactly 0% chance of winning the election, and 2) what she wants about the euro is far from clear and I will add 3) french politicians are never fulfilling their promises.
I can’t agree more, I’ve spent some time debunking his last articles on France.
The thing is, there are quite a lot of Frenchmen reading the english version Saker, most of them being relatively open-minded on Russia and on Iran.
This person hurts PressTV’s credibility among the French readers : “if they get it so wrong on the country I know, how can I trust them on the other topics ?”
This actually gives more power to the not-so-open-minded Frenchmen who repeatedly mock non-western blogs & newschannels. How long before someone at Le Monde or ARTE quotes Ramin Mazaheri’s caricatural vision of France and uses it to ridicule PressTV or Iran with it ?
This is actually quite an important issue.
You failed to read the analysis of the Dutch elections that linked:
https://www.theautomaticearth.com/2017/03/winners-are-losers-and-left-is-right/
If you had you would have realized that PM Mark Rutte’s right wing VVD party lost 20% of the seats they won in the previous election. Meanwhile, Geert Wilders’ very right wing party, PVV, won 25% more seats. “Moreover, Rutte’s coalition partner, labor PvdA, gave up 29 out of 38 seats to end up with just 9. That’s a loss of over 75%. Together, the coalition partners went from 79 seats in the 2012 election to 42 in 2017. That’s an almost 50% less.”
The ruling coalition would have done even worst it Rutte had not banned the Turkish ministers. As a result Erdogan has threatened to dump a couple million refugees into Western Europe. This will greatly enhance Le Pen’s chances of becoming the next president of a France that will no longer be a province of the EU.
In the end, France is probably doomed to follow the path of Rome:
http://www.fdrpodcasts.com/#/3371/the-truth-about-the-fall-of-rome-modern-parallels
http://www.fort-russ.com/2017/03/erdogans-blackmail-could-crash-eu-once.html
At the end of ugly WWII in France, there has been a consensus between Gaullists and Communists (CNR for Conseil National de la Résistance or National Resistance Council). This consensus has been methodically destroyed by neocon UE during the last forty years.
Mélenchon won’t make it in the first run of next presidential election and Le Pen in the second.
A candidate intends to reinvigorate that consensus and for doing it : strongly propose to quit that “jail for peoples” that is UE. He is the declared candidate of FREXIT, no ambiguity.
The odds of François Asselineau of making it to the second turn : higher and higher. Then (if…) of winning against the puppet Macron or the lure Le Pen : a certainty.
Something strange is being heard currently in the heart of France : what if he was not the right man at the right moment ? Mark that name : Asselineau.
I already told that but it seems the Saker can’t see it. Asselineau is the only way for us. sad the Saker miss it and never spoke about a french politicien who says; “there was a coup in Ukraine”, “US wars are illegals, we must go back to international laws”. “US, qatar and saudi arabia are behind ISIS” (he told this the first time he was received by TF1… last week) , “UE and nato are both faces of the same piece, american domination over européan nations”. he’s not a silly one, he was inspecteur général des finances and worked at the intelligence économique,every thing he says is sourced and can be checked, he went in ministerial cabinets and have experience from international relationship. he loves his country and many others country in the world. he send delegation to Sebastopol for the 70th, don’t forget our history of free mens (that’s what means “France”).
In France, the Zioncon are masters, they own the press and refuses to speek about him. this is our version of Trump bashing, here is Asselineau nothing. they are so scared about us, Soral (pro le Pen) and Fourest (pro femen/ Soros friendly) are both spitting at him, so the 2 faces of opposition are under control.
they changed the law for presidential election’s médias représentation, promoting people none want (Macron is a joke, as is Le Pen and all others partisans of an “other europe’). but we are here, in the présidential election, 30 days before it and it will be our last chance (they will not allows us to reitère the try.)
this year is an historic one, will we ploy under US/UE diktat or raise again as free people?
hard to says, the pressure is so intense and the mainstream blackout quasi total..
again, sad the Saker never saw it.
Thanks Ramin for this update on what’s going on in France and EU.
The EU project has had a chequered history and was effectively derailed with the advent of neoliberalism – the “dog eat dog” maxim of rapacious capitalism. You can’t have a Union when some of the members use it to further their own national interests to the detriment of others, particularly Germany who is the main beneficiary of the grouping. It is not dissimilar to a trade union where some workers use their industrial clout to obtain privileges for themselves while the least forceful ones are condemn to scraps. Airline pilots come to mind…
I grew up in a country of the EFTA group in a fairly developed industrial region that produced almost everything the country needed to keep the cars on the road without imports and in my home town there were five factories manufacturing car parts for most makes from engine components to blinkers and most of the plant and machinery was made in-house, including precision equipment to make ball bearings, piston segments and other specialised parts.
I left that country in 1969 and returned for a short visit in 1986, by then it was in the EEC of twelve. There was already in the air a sense of impending doom but outwardly the economy was coping with the inflow of imports from the other EEC members. I visited again in 1994 and the image I got was of total desolation. Basically all industrial concerns had shut down and you could see along the roads the familiar saw-tooth roofs of former factories, now empty shells.
It was the graphic and shocking realisation that the new EU entity had an agenda other than the welfare of the people of Europe – it had become the instrument to get nations into captivity for an expanding globalist market to benefit the multinational corporations, including the big US ones through their European off-shoots in the UK and Ireland.
The occasional observer of European economic statistics will note that Ireland has one of the highest GDP per capita but the visitor on the ground does not see much prosperity to go with it. Surprisingly, Ireland has also one of the highest ratios of exports per capita, yet its few ports are almost idle and factories rare. Ireland’s economy is almost a virtual one by dint of the accounting trickery of tax evasion transfer pricing under EU cover. Who benefits? The multinational corporate gangsters.
That EU should go to the dogs. Pity it ruined many countries who lost their industrial base and self-sufficiency.
Austerity laws are nothing to do with the EU per se. They are standard IMF-style rules imposed to punish the poor and transfer wealth to the connected individuals.
I wish the people who write these sitreps would embrace a sense of brevity and professionalism. The non-Saker sitreps (which are all of them now) tend to be so rambling and shambolic – and more concerned with showing the audience how clever the author is and how subtle is their sense of humor – that I find myself stopping 1/4 of the way through. I come here for information, not snark and sarcasm, even thought I get a YUGE involuntary helping of both every time. If I want to chuckle at sarcasm, I go to the Daily Stormer – you guys could take a lesson from that site – sarcasm has to be concise and pointed, not prolix. And if you simply must pepper objective information and analysis with so much opinion, snark and needless commentary, please provide an executive digest that contains just the information. I pine for the OLD Saker blog when it was just one honest man giving us unvarnished analysis.
spent some time working on this article to show how flawed it is. The European Union is one of the most complex topics one can find, it’s the nightmarish topic no politics student wants to have to write his test about.
Ramin Mazaheri text is huge and just won’t stop, this is why I will do the opposite of quoting, I will try to present what the EU is this is in two parts.
1- What is the function of the EU ?
The EU started as the “Common Market” (EEC) : export and import tax barriers disappeared between its members and they adopted a common tax policy towards other partners outside it.
A supernational entity emerged, for instance to coordinate the tax questions. This entity, the European Commission, actually coordinates a lot of other aspects, for instance there a commissar for Agriculture, another for Transportation etc. The Commission has no power to force agreement upon any state, this is why countries cherry-pick which common standards they’re ready to accept and which not. The French for instance managed to retain their right to make cheese with unsterilized milk, when the Commission tried to establish sterilized milk as raw material.
One may think this example is grotesque, but actually the EU works with small steps, only there are thousands of them at a time. The Commission is the one institution that has any kind of influence, it is also quite necessary given the diversity of the economies inside the EU.
2- Different speeds in the EU
From the get-go, the EU was aware that there were discrepancies between, for instance, the heavily industrialized Ruhrgebiet and the poor South of Italy. This is why there are programs to help the development of those poor regions, or at least to protect the livelihood of rural popualtions. The Common Agricultural Policy is about half of the EU’s total budget, it serves to protect the poorer rural populations from the price effects of mass-mechanized agriculture. Like everything EU-related it is much more complicated than that, and with perverse effects, but you get the idea.
Other funds like ERDF (FEDER in French) also exist to reduce inequalities. They built a lot of infrastructures in South Europe and Ex-Communist Europe, if you visited Athens, then its new International Airport, its subway and most modern highways were built with massive EU help.
3- Larger or deeper ?
At first the EU was a Common Market, but some countries expressed the desire to make it more than just that, deepening the bonds. France and Germany were establishing much more advanced cooperation than other countries, like the UK which from the start only saw the EU as nothing more than a Common Market to ease its exports on the continent. Countries like the UK want to enlarge the EU because it wants to sell to more countries (to sum it up).
These two tendencies shaped a lot of the problems that now plague the EU. You see that it goes beyond what a Junker or a Merkel have to say, again, every country cherry-picks what he wants from the EU.
When some member countries want to deepen the relations, they become more alike, for instance they have to follow certain budget guidelines so they can merge their national currencies into a common one, the Euro.
When some member countries want to enlarge the EU, they tend to favor discrepancies, like when the poor Southern or Ex-Communist countries joined in. When this happened, a lot of industries delocated factories there to benefit of lower cost of labour.
The two tendencies can be simultaneous : France and Germany increased cooperation while maintaing Poland to a modest level. This is because wealth and innovation is concentrating in a choice region(the Megalopolis) like the Eastern China Coast or the US East Coast. This is the very basis of a lesson about the european economy, but Ramin Mazaheri skipped school that day.
4 Why Ramin Mazaheri didn’t pass his exam
Ramin Mazaheri wants to create a sensation (if not a conspiracy) about the risks of a two-speed Europe when the issue was present from the start, is actually taking up half of the EU budget in remediation and keeps complexifying.
He mocks Junkers failing being like Fidel Castro when Cuba is a State and the Commission is a supranational institution who has no executive power by design.
Cringy embarassing moments :
a- Announcing what European midschoolers get taught since two generations as a news flash: “News flash: A multi-speed Europe is already legal”
b- “Doesn’t France and Germany want the neoliberal looting of poor countries to continue ? Because there’s money still to be had!” -> France and Germany are net contributors to help to poor countries. This helps returns in some ways but they are not economic. When you don’t understand something, annoying uncle always claims it’s all about the money. Looting Greek fishermen is more rewarding than exporting Audis or Airbuses.
Final word from so maybe I’m not seeing the bigger picture : “ maybe I’m not seeing the bigger picture.”
Yeah, that’s one way to say it.
“France and Germany are net contributors to help poor countries”?
I guess the Greek militants who sent the recent postal bomb to the IMF in Paris and for Wolfgang Schauble in Germany didn’t realize that Paris and Berlin were actually so very helpful and generous.
I described the EU mechanism. The help is made by the countries, i.e. this is tax money Frenchmen and Germans are paying to the EU so the EU can bring it to poor countries.
The Greek Debt Crisis involves the IMF, non-EU banks (american ones for instance), and is HUGELY COMPLICATED so I won’t even pretend to know the answer (or else I would be hired by a News Agency, who knows…). If you want headaches you can read this : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_government-debt_crisis
Also, the matter is so complex the Greek government has made a commission for the “truth on Greek Debt” ; the only link I have is in French https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commission_pour_la_v%C3%A9rit%C3%A9_sur_la_dette_publique_grecque
The thing is, it is not a purely EU thing at all.
I wrote my lengthy reply to emphasize how *very* complicated and *very*technical these matters are. The broad generalizations made only serve to blur our perception of the problems.
Worse yet, the complexification is part of the strategy (insert “aaaand it’s gone” meme), to pretend to have all the answers is not only naive, it actually helps the culprits.
ALex,
Young man, what we learned in school, does not help us understand the world.
You would peobably get hired by a news agency, as you believe and parrot the official motto; the matter is just too complicated for us to understand.
Please read Saker’s moderation policy … your comment violated rules #2 and #3 and has been removed …. future comments that fail to meet moderation policy will be removed without notification mod-hs
Anybody notice more and more MUSLIMS articles on this site.Also comenters..
I have always felt that there are not enough Muslims on this site.
They are the majority of the global population and should be better represented all across the West.
I suspect that the poster @Branko confuses Muslims with what most on this site would call Anglo-Zionist psychopathic Satanist mercenaries.
Communists – or Zionists – want a one world government – why doesn’t the author admit that?
Anyway, Peter Koenig gives a vivid description of what the EU is really about focussing on the true state of affairs in Greece.
If we let them get their way Greece’s plight today will be all our futures tomorrow.
https://www.darkmoon.me/2017/is-greece-being-sold-off-to-the-usual-suspects/#more-63132
And this of course was brought about by a socialist government – a socialist government elected on a campaign promise to end austerity.
I often stated that the EU is the 4th Reich and that the USA continues running Nazi-Germany.
(see staatenlos.info and pick the language of your choice)
prescott bush nazi
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=prescott+bush+nazi
Konrad Adenauer and the RE nazification of Germany in 1949
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pALk8hSut6A
Now, finally I found a highly respected historian who confirms this (with English subs):
Андрей Фурсов: Why the British wanted to destroy Germany
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tjt_Hr-zAb0
You are correct as the Nazi German Interior minister proposed a common European economic zone in 1941.
As for NATO, the first NATO Chief of Staff was previously Hitler’s Chief of Staff.
You cannot make this stuff up.
Thank you Ramin for this very interesting article, as are all your articles. It’s refreshing to read about Europe from a different viewpoint than what we are bombarded with by the MSM 24/7. That capitalism is a failure everywhere is by now clear for all to see. Unlimited growth on a limited planet is not sustainable.
And as we know, war is just capitalism by other means. Contrary to the dogma of the ideologues and for the sake of humanity, there must be other alternatives.
“Only when the last tree has died, the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught, will we realize we cannot eat money” – Cree Indian Proverb
Another Communist CRAP… COmmunism DESTROYED Russia…. Otherwise the Russian Empire would have Constantinople again, the armenian genocide would have not happened and Russia would be much bigger
I am having a hard time reading Mazaheri because I confess that I need paragraphs and not just a succession of single sentences. I have made the effort, but these articles are so long that I can’t keep up when there are no paragraphs. I get lost. It’s like driving on a road that soon turns into a path, and then you are not even sure you are on a path, so you finally turn around and head back rather than take a chance of getting stuck or bogged down.
I love the way you think that government spending in the region of forty percent of GDP means that we are on the right economically. If you think that redistributing just under half of all the money a country produces is not socialism, I would like to know how much more redistribution is needed.
Socialism is not defined by how much money is redistributed but by who owns the means of production and decides how money is distributed (which means there are no owners who get money without producing any tangible wealth). In socialism the means of production is own by the society — the people — and if a government handles it then the government is controlled by the people, democratically. There is no plutocratic capitalist class in socialism.
Hello, thank you so much for this holistic and sound approach to the Issue! The halt seems generally perpetuated through a constant uncertainiy especially among (us) the middle class. This mechanism erodes and stifles alternative thinking. To me it’s mainly grounded in two roots
– people are just users (blue eyed and uncanny) regarding new technology) they do not know much about how systems work and are set up
– according to my feeling the public is either fighting each other or living more and more anonymous. Economical insecurity seems to me the ultimate creator of vagueness and a hit and run mentality. There’s not so much room for empathy and solidarity. To me the capitalistic radicalism is putting the inspired and open minded people on the edge. There is no much room left for them. The true canny and ingenious people are not involved at least in the process of political decisions. If an environment is kept under those circumstances there can be no true evolution and an holistic emergence of society. Unfortunately it is likely to fail if theres no true abandoning of this system
Most of the French academia have adopted the Marxist Hegelian supremacy. As our brothers in America.
They even adopted Eric Fromm for total governmental supremacy.
For me, our solution is to extradite ourselves from philosophy, the gates upon which they (the government) has confined us.
Politics always needs a philosopher to validate themselves.
I would like to free the philosophers to speak and not be governmental minded.
Open to suggestions.
K
I don’t know where you find an argument for total government supremacy in Fromm.
As for this philosopher, such as I am, I’ve never felt not free to speak or to be constrained to government or anyone else. Philosophy (‘love of truth’) is supposed to build a chain of reason in support of any conclusions, right down to fundamental assumptions and methods, much as science is supposed to do. Sadly, there has never been a shortage of philosophers who fail fail at that, going back to Plato/Socrates, and Aristotle, who were more into rhetoric and sophistry than cold logic or validating cognitive systems. But then, the ancient Greeks were just starting out with this stuff and there’s been much development to draw on since then; if they could have tried their hands at computer programming they might have discovered the big differences between writing code and having it compile correctly without syntax errors and undefined variables, as well as producing executables which did what they though they wanted it to do.
If this austerity nonsense were run through a computer and tested for validity and bugs it would never even get out the coding room door. Neither would sanctions, the EU itself, or capitalism. It’s a matter of laying out the goals of these things and then looking at the results, and seeing the horrible results — but it has to be done honestly, and that’s the rub. If Aristotle has just measured the accelerations and velocities of light and heavy falling objects he would seen right off that he was completely wrong about it, and saved Newton the trouble of having to discover the laws of motion. If the church had been honest about Galileo’s work instead of being petty tyrants they could have avoided the inquisition, and even taken credit for such revelations themselves and profited from the Renaissance and Enlightenment. If Hollande and Tsipris didn’t cover up and overheat their brains every time they put their trousers on they could escape the fascist terrors of the EU and it’s current inquisition and have prosperous economies, and fiscal and political independence.
It’s not that there have not been problems with philosophers, but calling greed, stupidity, corruption, and fascism ‘philosophy’ isn’t a solution.
I think Junker already stopped this.
IT may not be terribly productive, as the same thing can be said about most of the EU and the Five Eyes + Israel, its big brother, but all of the above-named are Zionist-occupied territory.
But I somehow think that the Talmudo-Satanist origins and ideology of Zionism (and Anglo-Zionism) cannot be defeated if we do not identify the problem and beginning talking about how to solve it.
France has not been ‘French’ since Nicola Sarkozy.
That the French taking back France should be unpopular in the rigged and Zionist-controlled polls is entirely unsurprising. Polls are an integral part of mass media and serve the same masters as it, in ensuring that votes trend in the direction ‘needed’ at any given time.
Even if the polls ‘lose’ any given election, as they so splendidly did in the USA, you can be certain that they have nevertheless had a large influence on it.